Tag: mariah carey

Parties, Playlists, and New Year’s Bops: The Music the World Is Playing to Ring in 2023

December 29, 2022

As the year comes to a close, we can’t help but be amazed at what a landmark year 2022 was for music. But now it’s time to look ahead and ring in 2023 with style.

New year, new hub

We’ve got plenty of music to kickstart your celebration, and it’s all in our freshly launched New Year’s Hub. At this one-stop destination you can find classic party playlists and special takeovers from artists like Charli XCX, Rita Ora, N-Dubz, and Madame Canada herself, Céline Dion. And whether you want a low-key night or a heart-pounding dancefest, we have you set with featured playlists to match the vibe you’re channeling. Plus, on Home starting January 1, you can find content to help you set your resolutions.

So that’s what Spotify is doing . . . but how do Spotify listeners like to ring in the new year? The best way to predict the future is to look at past results, so we checked the data archives to see how the world was celebrating in December 2021.

What the world is playing

There’s always some level of anticipation around the new year and that shows in the playlists fans put together. Last year 82,000 New Year’s Eve playlists were created between Christmas and January 31, with nearly 40,000 created on the night itself. 

When it comes to genres, as expected listeners went straight for the uplifting bops and hits. Pop, hip-hop, trap, k-pop, and indie pop were the top genres played worldwide. Genres that saw the most significant rises in listeners were cumbia, discofox, volksmusik, schlager, and partyschlager (for those who think regular schlager isn’t festive enough.)

NYE 2021 was all about the tracks you could sing and dance along to. “Hey Ya!,” “Uptown Funk”, and “Mr. Brightside” all received plenty of attention. Many of the songs that gained more streams were New Year-specific tracks like Mariah Carey‘s rendition of “Auld Lang Syne – The New Year’s Anthem” and ABBA’s “Happy New Year,” which led the pack with an approximately 2,000% increase in plays.

Whatever your plans are for ringing in the new year, we hope that 2023 is just as fantastic for listening as this one was. 

Plan your party now over on our New Year’s Hub or with the featured New Year’s Eve 2023 playlist.

Spotify Supergrouper Lets Fans Mix and Match Their Favorite Artists Into the Band of Their Dreams

June 28, 2022

Over the years, fans have been surprised by collaborations between their favorite artists onstage and in the recording booth. Remember when Gorillaz and Madonna performed together at the Grammys? How about when Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. came together for “Walk This Way?” The possibilities are endless for these creative partnerships—and fans have plenty of dream groupings of their own. Enter Supergrouper, a Spotify in-app experience that invites music fans in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines to create and share their ultimate all-star assemblies of artists.

Look at your playlists and liked songs on Spotify; you’ll probably notice that the artists you listen to don’t fit into one genre or era. But perhaps you can imagine, say, Luke Combs performing side by side with Khalid and Florence + The Machine.   

Maybe they come from different parts of the world, maybe some have passed on, or maybe they just haven’t had a reason to come together—yet. Supergrouper gives you the power to bring together your dream band of artists and share your creative combinations with friends and fellow fans. Here’s how: 

  1. First and foremost, make sure your Spotify app is up-to-date.
  2. Visit https://spotify.com/supergrouper on your mobile device. 
  3. Choose your artists: Select the artists you’d like in your dream band. You’ll also get to select their roles, whether “The Lead,” “The Lyricist,” “The Hypeman,” and more. If you’re stuck, you can let Spotify randomize artists for you based on your listening habits.
  4. Add a name: Take your personalization one step further and give your super group a special name.
  5. Share and listen: Supergrouper will create a personalized playlist for you that features music from all of your super group artists. Plus, you’ll receive a custom card to share with friends and followers on social media.

Although there’s no guarantee your favorite artists will get together onstage or in the studio, Supergrouper lets you do the next-best thing. Now, you can really imagine—or even try to manifest—a collaboration between Mariah Carey, Charlie Puth, and Maluma.

What are you waiting for? Put your music director hat on and head to spotify.com/supergrouper to start creating the world’s next music super group. 

The Christmas Hits That Are Trending on Spotify This Season

December 14, 2021

There’s no better way to get in the holiday spirit than by cranking up the festive tunes. From cheerful classics to jolly pop hits, we wanted to see what people are humming along to this season. After looking under the hood of Santa’s sleigh, here’s what we found when it comes to Spotify streaming.

Listeners were eager to get a jump-start on their merry music—Sunday, November 28 saw the most streams of Christmas music outside of the month of December. Mariah Carey’s 1994 pop hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” continues to be a favorite—it recently hit 1 billion streams on Spotify. But that’s not the only woman-powered song that’s been accumulating some play time on listeners’ speakers. Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” took the top spot in the U.S. for the most-streamed Christmas song during the first week of December this year.

Looking at global listening over the past month (November 1 through December 9, 2021), we found that five familiar tunes are holding their place at the top of the Christmas tree—proving they are classics for a reason. Unsurprisingly, Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the most-streamed Christmas song on Spotify. The second most-streamed song is “Last Christmas” by Wham!, followed by Michael Bublé’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” Rounding out the top spots are “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms and Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” This roundup comes as no surprise, as four of these songs are ranked in Spotify’s top five most-streamed Christmas songs of all time. 

If you’re looking for more contemporary Christmas songs to add to your playlist, the top five most-streamed Christmas tracks that have been released in the past five years are: “Snowman” by Sia, “White Christmas” by Amy Grant, “Santa’s Coming for Us” by Sia, “Hallelujah” by Pentatonix, and “Merry Christmas” by Ed Sheeran and Elton John.

We also decided to see what other Christmas tunes listeners are adding to their own user-generated playlists. Beyond the songs mentioned above, some of the most popular tracks include: “Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber, “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (with The B. Swanson Quartet)” by Frank Sinatra, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. 

The next time you sit down with your eggnog, make sure these Christmas hits are queued up. And if you’re looking for more, give the Spotify Singles: Holiday Collection playlist a listen.

Mariah Carey Says: Christmas. Starts. Now.

November 21, 2019

Year after year, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by legendary pop star Mariah Carey is the top-streamed holiday song. It’s become a cultural phenomenon with more than 520 million global plays, over 1,000 covers from the likes of Michael Bublé, Milos Foreman, Clementine Duo, and a familiar presence on more than 12 million playlists. So who better than the record-breaking singer-songwriter and “Queen of Christmas” herself to announce that the holiday is officially upon us? 

Watch as Mariah, in all her holiday glory, opens the season from her Christmas control room in an exclusive Spotify video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5dbS4dAMXo

Now that the season has officially begun, Spotify is excited to celebrate not only the holiday, but a special anniversary. This Christmas marks 25 years of Mariah’s self-penned hit single—which, by the way, is streamed every month of the year and not just in November and December—so we partnered with Mariah to launch the Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You Enhanced Album out today, November 21. 

The enhanced album is curated with original content to complement the masterpiece of Mariah’s Merry Christmas (Deluxe Anniversary Edition) album and will serve as the ultimate destination as Mariah Carey fans from around the world stream her songs to celebrate the holiday season for years to come. 

There’s plenty of reasons to believe that Mariah’s music embodies that holiday magic. Last year, there was over a 2,000% increase of streams of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from October to December, with December 24 understandably being the biggest day of the year for streaming the song globally. Celebrants in the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany tune-in to the song the most, and though they’re younger than the song themselves, Spotify users 18-24 are the top age group to play “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” 

And, if you’re looking to expand your holiday hit horizons, take a listen to one of the top-streamed covers from Michael Bublé, Fifth Harmony, Agnes and Måns Zelmerlöw, and the Glee Cast. 

Looking to get that jingle bell intro stuck in your head for the entire holiday season? Stream Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You Enhanced Album, below.

Why Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ is Streamed More Than Any Other Holiday Song

December 18, 2018

We don’t want a lot for Christmas, we just want to know why Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” holiday hit is so popular—and so insanely catchy.

There’s no point in trying to resist the No. 1 global smash-hit song penned by Carey and Grammy Award-winning songwriter Walter Afanasieff, ironically in the summer of 1994. The earworm quality is by design.

Afanasieff, who’s also written for Whitney Houston and Celine Dion, originally worried that the song was too basic. But it’s the pop song’s simplicity, he says in an ASCAP interview, that made it so incredibly successful. “The oversimplified melody made it easily palatable for the whole world to go, ‘Oh, I can’t get that out of my head!” Afanasieff says.

The Music, Mind and Brain group at Goldsmiths University in London analyzed the musical structures of 1,000 of “the most stubborn” earworm songs to find out why they get burned into our brains. And what they discovered supports Afanasieff’s point. As reported in a recent The Day USA article, the researchers found that highly repetitive songs, like Pharrell Williams’s “Happy,” enable people to emotionally connect to a song without trying very hard. The minor, often predictable, shifts in melody in unforgettable tunes make them easier to commit to memory with minimal effort. What’s more, our brains appear to experience a cerebral, super-satisfying high when a melody continues just how we expected it to.

The seasonal yuletide instruments sprinkled heavily throughout the song are a huge part of why we can’t get enough of it, says Ben Camp, assistant professor of songwriting at Berklee College of Music, in a recent Vice article dissecting the addictive ditty. The glockenspiel-laden melody plays to our childlike sense of wonder and our affinity for nostalgia.

“The song starts with the sound of a glockenspiel, which, for some people, is enough to stir up memories of music boxes and sugarplum fairies and childhood joy,” Camp says.

“But, not only is the sound of the instrument safe and warm, the melody it’s playing is safe as well. It’s outlining the tonic chord—musically speaking, the home key of the song,” he says. “Then we hear that very same melody telling us we’re cozy at home again. But, this time, it’s Mariah’s sweet voice singing it with church bells and sweeping strings behind her.”

According to Professor Camp, “If you were born anywhere between 1970 and 1980, the song’s going to have been introduced to you at a time in your life when you were the most emotionally susceptible to musical imprint.” Interestingly, our streaming data backs up Camp’s claim: People who stream “All I Want For Christmas Is You” the most on Spotify are between the ages of 45 and 54.

But that’s not to say that people of all ages—and all over the world—can’t get their fill of the Christmas favorite, too. It’s the second song on our Global Top 200 songs chart right now. Yes, this 24-year-old Christmas classic is rocking the No. 2 spot directly after Ariana Grande’s No. 1 viral breakup hit, “thank u, next.”

With Mariah crooning, “I don’t want a lot for Christmas/There is just one thing I need/And I don’t care about the presents/Underneath the Christmas tree,” the main theme of the song is bringing loved ones close together at the holidays, rather than material things. This represents one of more than a few clever ways the song universally appeals to the masses—and the common emotions that make us all tick.

Another critical element of the song’s success, says Afanasieff, is its exceptional relatability. “The genius of Mariah doing a rock ’n’ roll is that she created—probably to this day—the only up-tempo Christmas love song that people like just because of the interchangeability of lyrics,” he says. “Anybody can sing it to anybody. It’s about everybody and it can only mean one thing, from father to child or mother to child or wife to husband, it’s just, all I want for Christmas is you.” And who can’t relate to that?

In the mood for Mariah’s catchy tune? Simply hit play and let the holiday magic sweep you off your feet.